Jesus’ Mandate for Justice: Human Trafficking & Abortion
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Thursday, April 5th, 2007, 8:30 PM
Fire in the Night Internship: International House of Prayer, Kansas City
I. The Justice Mandate at IHOPKC
A. An important prayer focus of the IHOPKC Missions Base is our Justice Mandate. The LIFE Mandate encompasses several issues including: abortion, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, human trafficking, domestic violence, and child abuse.
B. In this handout I am only covering two of these issues: abortion and human trafficking.
II. Abortion- God Desires to Rescue the Unborn
A. IHOPKC has a very specific mandate to contend for the ending of abortion.
1. An important prophetic voice to our house has been Bob Jones. Some of his stories are told in the prophetic history set Encountering Jesus.
a) On August 7th, 1975 God told Bob about all the ways technology would perform abortions.
b) The enemy later appeared to Bob and told him if he shared about this that he would kill him.
c) Bob shared about it anyway and the enemy actually took his life, but, after
visiting Heaven, the Lord brought him back to life.[1]
2. May 7th-28th Bound4LIFE, a ministry founded by Lou Engle, and IHOPKC did a 22 day “Silent Siege” at a local abortion clinic.
a) One of the intercessory missionaries in our midst felt called to do this “Silent
Siege” praying in silence with red tape over our mouth with the word LIFE
written on it.
b) We stood outside of a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic about 10 minutes from the IHOPKC Missions Base Red Bridge Center ominously located on Roe Ave. (alluding to the infamous Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion).
c) Amazingly, as Mike Bickle and that missionary looked for the best dates to hold the Silent Siege the only available dates were the anniversary dates of the Joel 2 Solemn Assembly of 1983. During this assembly God established our specific mandate for raising up “24/7 worship and prayer in the spirit of the tabernacle of David”.
B. Some statistics of abortion:
1. Since 1973 over 48 million babies have been killed from abortion in America alone.
2. Over 4,400 babies are killed every day in this nation.
3. Worldwide abortion totals are over 50,000,000 every year.
4. Abortion has been especially targeted at the Black Community.
a) Even though black women only constitute 13% of the population, according to the Center for Disease Control, in 2003, 37% of all abortions were performed on black women.
b) According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, black women are more than 3 times as likely as white women to have an abortion.
c) One of the original intents of Margret Sannger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was to exterminate African Americans through their birth control services.[2]
C. God desires to rescue unborn children from death. An especially revelatory
scripture to this reality is Psalm 18.
1. In context David wrote Psalm 18 as a prayer to the Lord on the day that He delivered him from his enemies.[3]
2. However, before the Presidential elections of 2004, during 50 days of 24/7 prayer in Colorado Springs for the 50 states, Chris Berglund, a prophetic voice and close friend to Lou Engle, had a dream. The Lord showed Chris in the dream that a well was going to open up for the ending of abortion from Psalm 18 and Psalm 28.
3. The morning after Chris had this dream Lou came into our prayer room to process through the dream with us.
4. As we looked through Psalm 18 we began to see it from the perspective of the unborn in the womb:
4The cords of death encompassed me, And the torrents of ungodliness terrified me. 5The cords of Sheol surrounded me; The
snares of death confronted me. 6In my distress I called upon the LORD, And cried to my God for help; He heard my voice out of His temple, And my cry for help before Him came into His ears…
13The LORD also thundered in the heavens, And the Most High uttered His voice, Hailstones and coals of fire. 14He sent out His arrows, and scattered them…
16He sent from on high, He took me; He drew me out of many waters. 17He delivered me from my strong enemy, And from those who hated me, for they were too mighty for me. 18They confronted me in the day of my calamity, But the LORD was my stay. 19He brought me forth also into a broad place; He rescued me, because He delighted in me.
5. “In my distress I called upon the Lord…He heard my voice…”
a) Oh how our Father in Heaven’s heart must as he hears the cries of these little ones in the womb.
b) Their cries, though silent to our ears, are heard perfectly by their Father in
Heaven.
c) Jesus said of His Father, “it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones perish.” (Matt. 18:14)
d) If He desires that not even one little one perish, how it must pain him to hear the cries of over 48 million babies killed in our nation alone. He hears their
voices even in their silence!
6. I like to call the following verses 7-19 “The Heavenly Response”. As He hears their
voices, He responds from Heaven.
7. “…He drew me out of many waters. He delivered me from my strong enemy…He rescued me because He delighted in me.” (Verse 16b, 17a, 19b)
a) This verse is an allusion to the Exodus story.
b) The name Moses means “drawn out of many waters”[4].
c) Just as God drew the deliverer Moses out of many waters (Exodus 2:3-6), The Father will take these little ones, draw them from the waters of the womb, and rescue them because He delights in them.
D. We rejoiced as God gave us victory over Partial Birth Abortion this year!
1. Partial Birth Abortion had been an especially evil part of the abortion industry. In
this procedure the baby was partially delivered and then killed outside of the
womb.
2. In 2003 President Bush signed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act making Partial Birth Abortion illegal in all circumstances.
3. However, the law never went into affect because it was challenged by the courts.
4. This past April the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the ban 5-4 making Partial Birth Abortion illegal!!
E. Points for Prayer
1. Continue to pray for the nine Supreme Court justices: John Roberts, John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Samuel Alito.
2. Pray for the appointing of a godly justice as there could likely be a vacancy soon.
3. Pray for Norma McCorvey (the Roe of Roe v. Wade who turned to Christ and is fighting to overturn her case). She recently received a serious death threat.
4. Pray for Sandra Cano (the Doe of Doe v. Bolton, the second most significant abortion case, who also is fighting to overturn her case). She was admitted to a
hospital in Georgia for a potential heart attack.
III. Human Trafficking
A. Recently the issue of Human Trafficking became a regular focus of prayer in our LIFE Mandate.
1. On Monday, February 5th of this year Benji Nolot, one of our leaders, shared a burden the Lord had placed on his heart for human trafficking in a briefing before an intercession meeting.
a) As the team discussed it, one of the singers spoke up that she had just had a dream related to this issue the week before.
b) She said that in the dream she was kidnapped by a foreign man and taken to the home of an American man. Once inside this home she realized she was in a brothel, and would be forced into a life of prostitution. In the dream she began to see the babies she would have to abort as a result of this lifestyle. She then heard someone (she believed was Jesus) singing “Open up the heavens over the weak!”
2. So, they focused the prayer meeting on Human Trafficking and it gripped the entire room. For two hours they cried out for woman and children enslaved through traffickers.
3. A day and a half later Wednesday, Feb. 7th, Austrian authorities busted a huge child pornography ring involving over 2,300 child pornographers in 77 countries.
a) The suspects paid to view videos depicting infants and young children being
sexually abused. Federal police called the case “a strike against child pornography unprecedented in Austrian criminal history.”
b) Austrian authorities said the FBI was investigating about 600 of the suspects in the United States.
c) They said the videos seized included images that showed the worst kind of child sexual abuse. Girls could be seen being raped, and you could also hear screams.
B. Trafficking in women and girls is the second or third most profitable industry used by
organized crime after drugs and guns.
1. The United Nations estimates that as many as 4 million women and children are trafficked around the world for purposes of forced prostitution, labor and other forms of exploitation every year, meaning every thirty seconds or 2,500 per day another person becomes a victim.
2. The UNICEF reports that across the world, there are over one million children entering the sex trade every year and that approximately 30 million children have lost their childhood through sexual exploitation over the past 30 years.
3. There are currently 27-30 million individuals in slavery today (that is more than the African Slave trade of the 1800s), 70-75 percent of whom are sex slaves.
C. To make matters worse, according to a survey, 40 percent of the ex-prostitutes interviewed said policemen were clients at their brothels.
1. Some reported seeing money changing hands between pimps and police officers.
2. In one case, a woman said the police tipped her pimp off about an impending raid.
3. Another woman claimed the police dragged an escaped prostitute back to their brothel.
D. The United States is not aloof from Human Trafficking.
1. Relying on research from the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Department estimates there are at least 50,000 human trafficking victims brought into the United States each year.
2. The United States is among the top three destination countries for sex traffickers, along with Japan and Australia.
3. There are at least 2.4 million children exploited in the sex industry in America.
E. Human Trafficking and abortion are inseparable issues.
1. Both issues are justice issues and God’s heart for justice touches both issues very deeply.
2. As we have researched this topic we have shuttered to find that it is not unusual that if a woman or girl has been trafficked for only two to three years she has endured more than a dozen abortions at the hands of her traffickers.
F. Human trafficking is a part of the Harlot of Babylon’s kingdom during the tribulation.
And the merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her, because no one buys their cargos (merchandise) any more; 12cargos of gold and silver, precious stones and pearls and fine linen…and slaves and human lives.
(Rev. 18:11,13)
IV. Isaiah 42- Beholding The Warrior Son
1“Behold, My Servant, whom I uphold; My chosen one {in whom} My soul delights. 2I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry out or raise {His voice,} Nor make His voice heard in the street. 3A bruised reed He will
not break And a dimly burning wick He will not extinguish; He will faithfully
bring forth justice. 4He will not be disheartened or crushed Until He has established justice in the earth; And the coastlands will wait expectantly for His law.” (Isaiah 42:1-4 NASB)
A. “Behold My Servant”– The passage begins with an exhortation from the Father to Behold Jesus, the Servant-King.
1. In this passage we see several aspects of Jesus’ character.
2. 2 Corinthians 3:18 illustrates the “Beholding and Becoming Principle”. That which
you behold is what you become.
a) This chapter is filled with aspects of the character of the Son that can transform us as we look at them.
b) The New Living translates this phrase, “Look at my servant”. We are called to look at Jesus and be transformed by what we see.
B. Verse 4- “He will not grow faint or be discouraged until He has established
justice in the earth” (ESV)
1. Jesus will not relent, He will not stop until.
2. With the ups and downs in the battle for the unborn and those enslaved it is critical that we behold this in the Son.
a) Last year I faced the necessity of this verse first hand.
1) South Dakota tried to ban abortion.
2) However, after months of battling in prayer, the measure failed. We lost.
3) My heart was growing faint and I was discouraged.
4) It was only in beholding the Son that I was strengthened. The Man who neither grows faint nor is discouraged- UNTIL.
b) We will undoubtedly win many more battles and loose many battles until the day when Jesus fulfills the hope of our hearts setting up His Kingdom where these injustices will be forever defeated.
C. Verse 3- “A dimly burning wick He will not extinguish”
1. As we behold His justice we must also see his mercy.
a) He does everything through mercy.
1) My paraphrase of this phrase used in my song “Mighty Warrior” is “even the flames that are barely flames at all / You will not quench.”
2) If Jesus sees even a flicker of a flame, He doesn’t put it out.
b) As we approach these topics involving wicked men, we must remember His mercy.
1) He is a judge and He will judge wickedness.
2) But, for the offenders and the offended He stands with nail pierced hands calling them to repent and be saved from eternal punishment.
2. All of us have drunk from the fountain of convenience and sexual immorality which fuels these issues.
a) As we pray over these issues, it is not a matter of us and them!
1) Daniel prayed a specific way in Daniel 9, “Lord we have sinned, we have acted wickedly”
2) Daniel bore the guilt for his nation.
b) This is how we must come before the Lord with these issues—we have sinned and we have committed injustice as a nation.
[1]
Bob Jones, from the CD Open Heavens, Volume 1. Tracks The Sands of Time
and Life Death Encounter
[3]
See 2 Sam. 22 where David spoke this Psalm on the day he was delivered from
King Saul.
[4]
See Strong’s Hebrew Definitions for Moses- H4872.